Raise your hand if you like your stuff organized so you can easily store it and find it when you need it. MEEEEE. I like that. A lot. Now, raise your hand if you like a good deal. Yeeeah. That’s what I thought. Err’body loves a good deal.
So we got a new toy recently. This Craftsman rolling cabinet.
Normally $199, I snagged it from Sears for $81.99. I absolutely couldn’t resist because 1) what a deal! and 2) we have a serious tool organization problem. Yeah yeah, standard ball bearings so it’s not one of those crazy smooth gliding things, but who cares? I sure don’t.
Last month, we moved all of our tools from a closet in the future nursery to the closet in the guest room.
And it’s a mess. We’ve never really had it all together. Here’s the “system” we were working with. We labeled plastic shoe boxes and stored tools and supplies in them. Not the worst, but as our collection grew (paint tape spontaneously spawns, except when you need it most, fyi), the boxes became overwhelmed.
We had three tool boxes as well, all with random tools in them. We kept most priority tools in the pink bag pictured. But it wasn’t working. Look at the stuff I had to pull out just to get to what I needed to assemble the rolling cart!
I ordered the cart online and picked it up at the store. Honestly, I’ve never shopped at Sears, but it was a very pleasant experience. We walked into the pickup area, punched the order number into a kiosk and were added to a queue on a screen (we happened to be the only people there). Within two minutes, an associate wheeled our order out. We loaded it in our car, which was conveniently parked in a space reserved for in-store pickups, and that was that. So darn easy. It was ready within a couple of hours of ordering! I’ve used in-store pickup at a few places (Lowe’s, Home Depot), and this was by far my favorite. Maybe because of the minimal human interaction, haha. But also for the efficiency!
Anywho, back to the cart. Installing the wheels was a snap. The cart came with one sheet of squishy black liner for the top. I decided to buy more ($10 at Lowe’s) and line the drawers. Tools + metal = too clangy for me. Also, potential for scratches, which would mess up the black finish and make my undiagnosed OCD tick. Totally worth the money and the five minutes to took to cut and install.
An hour later, everything was sorted. The high priority tools went in drawer #1.
Drawer #2 became home to adhesives and fillers. (That box in the back right? Mostly full of hex keys we’ve collected over the years from various furniture assembly projects. It’s actually incredible.)
The paint drawer, obviously. (Which, by the way, most of this stuff was stored in a drawer in a piece of furniture because it didn’t fit in the shoebox method.)
And in drawer #4, we have screws, nails, staples, a few plumbing things, furniture pads and other random things.
The best part? The cart squeaks right into the closet nook.
However, we have more plans for this closet. Namely, shelves. We thought about it, and what gets pushed to nooks in a closet like this? Clothes you never wear and should get rid of, or junk you should have donated/sold/trashed long ago. So our plan is to shelve it out. The cart won’t wheel in there (which is fine since we need it out to access the drawers anyway), but we’ll be able to stack paint cans and bigger tools (drill, drill bit box, nail gun, etc.) and everything will have a home that will make sense!
We just need to figure out how we’re going to do the shelving. Something adjustable and non-permanent is preferable, just in case. (“Maybe our kid will play golf and need a place for clubs,” is a crazy hypothetical situation that ran through my head.)
So from wretched and unorganized to easy accessible and clean, for less than $100. Not to mention, the cart has an “expansion” that can be stacked on top should we need that in the future. But we like what we’ve got now, and until we have a garage with a full set of cabinets, this will do just fine.
Any good deals come your way lately? By the way, hat tip to Lifehacker. They post a daily Deals of the Day article and this was listed.
Oh, and happy Valentine’s Day!
